The last part of the article said the police would check the AK47 for “proper ownership”. How exactly do they propose to do this as PA quite properly has no longarm database?
is this just bad reporting or police handing out misinformation?

I assumed that to mean they would do a trace. We’ve had registration in this country since 1968, it’s just that you can only, given a long gun, find out who the last person was to buy it at retail. Handguns are a different matter in PA, and there is an arguably illegal registry of those, which is no secret at this point. Actually, given PICS, there is probably one of long guns as well. One reason we need to get rid of POCs.